Google Ads vs. Semrush

Clients who are selling products such as dresses, clothes, jewelry, beauty products, etc., generally work well. Also, in some cases, it doesn't fetch a good ROAS for very small business owners. If a client is already doing well in SEO, the probability for it to perform well over Google Ads is always enhanced, and if it doesn't have a good organic reach, Google Ads also suffers.

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This is suited to plan for keywords in a single market, but it struggles when you need to consolidate several markets. It is well-suited to discover new keywords directly related to the ones being used currently to expand the content the company is creating to get better results.

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• Keyword Research - Google Ads has a handy built in tool that helps determine important keywords to target both for Ads & SEO
• Intuitive Analytics Dashboad - Google Ads makes it fairly simple to see and analyze important metrics on how your ads are running week after week
• Intuitive Setup - Google Ads makes it easy to figure out how to run ads with little to no training (although training is highly recommended to run effective ads), as their interface is clean and easy to figure out (unlike competing products).

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• Great visuals for keyword position tracking, love that you can see the page that is ranking
• Enjoyed the auto-generated reporting feature (specifically in the context of keyword position tracking)
• Shows many different and useful views for competitive research
• Great templated keyword research tools for those who are not as hands-on with SEO
• I LOVE the Keyword Magic Tool for honing in on longtail, high-opportunity keywords

• If you don't know what you're doing, it will be a costly mistake. You need to target ads, and it is difficult the first time to do that.
• There isn't a feature to run an add for a couple set date spans, just hours you want to run them or a single date span.

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• Extra seats can be expensive, as [an] agency with multiple team members this can be frustrating
• Backlink data is not great, misses out a lot of backlinks (better off using a specialist backlink tool like Link research tools LRT)
• Tracking multiple keywords, across multiple clients can be costly

I think Google Ads is good for getting your company out there and becoming more visible to potential customers in general. However, for specific product launches, social media advertising might be a better fit. Also, our user base is younger so social media is a better channel for our target audience.

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I [previously] used Semrush for many years and I cannot find any other tool being so complete and easy to use.

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I suspect that Google Ads is not for the novice user. I told my 'Ad Specialist' that I was not the best on computers and apprehensive about my ability to maneuver the website. He told me on more than one occasion that "I work for you...I'm your sherpa...call me any time or send me an email"!
The sales and service representatives for Google Ads are very well trained, though not much integrity. Despite that I told my Google Ad Specialist that my website was incomplete the ad was published live anyway! Beware that the 'talk' is good, but it ain't cheap!

SEMRush has a slight learning curve, but everything is organized really well. Once you learn where everything is, using the software and running reports is incredibly easy. You can easily add new projects, get help for improving on-page SEO, and there are even video tutorials that walk you through the whole system if you still feel uncomfortable with it.

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Semrush available when you need it!

SemRush performs well with few errors!

We have not yet had an account rep who hasn't tried to bully me or other employees to raise our budgets. At the same time, several years ago, one attempted to help refine our ads and ended up changing the ads to be something we were not affiliated with

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I'm in a FB group for Semrush paid users and it amazing! They are fast to respond, take suggestions and help with questions. I have not felt alone in using this product at all. Highly recommend their support team. When I had an issue I can jump into the group and they will help get me the right person to help or even tag their programmers to look at something that is going on. Love the group!

Daily use with advanced account structures. Familiarity with reporting/api and complex setups.

I did it by myself and do not have a comment!

Our agency invests heavily in Google Ads (particularly paid search advertising) on behalf of our clients relative to competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo because Google is the top search engine in the world. Google collects the most search data which enables the company to improve its AI to drive better performance for agencies and brands. As such, our paid search and app install campaigns always start with Google. If a client has a large budget, we will allocate media dollars to other search engines, but in some cases, the entire search budget goes to Google because we see the best returns.

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We have used both Ahrefs and Semrush extensively at our agency and Semrush remains the tool of choice. We find that Semrush has the largest selection of tools & features to use, with the highest accuracy, and provides top-tier analysis recommendations. It's really is the ultimate all-in-one tool when comparing other performance measurement tools in the digital marketing space.

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Semrush is flexible and scalable software which can be deployed across multiple departments and sites as needed.

• Google Ads is often one of our highest ROI channels, especially when you factor in branded ads.
• Depending on the stage your business is in, search ads can be really powerful from an ROI perspective, providing an investment with a very high spend cap.
• If you do not manage the campaigns well though, you can quickly spend a lot of money on nothing. So make sure someone is keeping an eye on your account.

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• Using Semrush on behalf of our clients, we have seen some impressive growth in organic visibility, traffic, conversion and revenue, across multiple industries.
• The site checks available with Semrush have helped us to pitch and sell our services, securing new clients.

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